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Soyuz
TMA-3 mission at a glance:
Crew:
- Alexander
Kaleri (Russia) Commander:
-
Michael Foale (USA) NASA Science Officer
Main task:
To
deliver and return the 8th long-duration crew of the International Space
Station,
ISS
.
Launch:
2003
October 18
Docking
date:
2003
October 20
Landing
date:
2004
April 30
Duration:
195
days (extended one day from the original plan)
|
Previous mission:
Soyuz TMA-2
The mission
of the Soyuz TMA-3 spacecraft to the
International
Space Station
in the fall of 2003, was originally intended to be a
routine exchange of a rescue vehicle onboard the outpost. The so-called
"taxi crew," would fly Soyuz TMA-3 to the station, spend a week
onboard and then parachute back to Earth inside the reentry capsule of
the
Soyuz TMA-2
spacecraft
.
However
the loss of Columbia and resulting grounding of the Shuttle fleet left
Russia as a "care taker" of the station and the Soyuz spacecraft
as the only vehicle capable of rotating crews onboard the outpost. As
a result, the Soyuz TMA-3 mission was re-purposed to carry aloft and return
the eighth long-term crew of the station.
On July 25,
2003, NASA officially announced that NASA astronaut Michael Foale and
Russian cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri are set to be the eighth crew to live
aboard the International Space Station. The Soyuz TMA-3 spacecraft was
scheduled to bring the crew to the station in October 2003 and return
it back to Earth six months later.
Russian Aviation
and Space Agency, Rosaviacosmos, also felt safe to resume week-long missions
of guest cosmonauts to the ISS. European Space Agency, ESA sponsored a
number of such missions in a special agreement with Russian Federation.
The next in-line for the flight was European astronaut
Pedro
Duque, representing Spain, one of the ESA members.
Pre-launch
processing
2003
October 6:
Primary and backup crews of the Soyuz TMA-3 arrived to
Baikonur for a familiarization training with their spacecraft.
2003
October 7:
Primary and backup crews of the Soyuz TMA-3 conducted familiarization
training with their spacecraft in
Baikonur
.
2003
October 8:
The fueling of the Soyuz TMA-3 spacecraft.
2003
October 11:
Final inspection of the Soyuz TMA-3 by the officials
2003
October 13:
Primary and backup crews inspect the Soyuz TMA-3 inside
processing building at
Site 254
.
2003
October 14:
A payload section with the Soyuz TMA-3 spacecraft was
transported from Site 254 to the processing building at
Site
112
for integration with the
Soyuz FG
launch vehicle.
2003
October 15:
A payload section with the Soyuz TMA-3 spacecraft was
integrated with the
Soyuz FG
launch vehicle.
2003
October 16:
The Soyuz FG launch vehicle with Soyuz TMA-3 spacecraft
was rolled out from the assembly building at Site 110 to the launch pad
at
Site 2
.
The launch
The
Soyuz
TMA-3 spacecraft, carrying a crew of three
blasted off from
Baikonur Cosmodrome
's
Site
1
, at 9:38:03 Moscow Summer Time on October 18, 2003, heading to the
ISS.
Onboard
were the Russian commander Alexander Kaleri, NASA Science Officer Michael
Foale, comprising the eight long-term crew of the station, and European
astronaut Pedro Duque, a visiting crew member. Duque returned to Earth
after eight days onboard the outpost, in the company of the seventh long-term
crew, which stayed in orbit since April 2003.
The
Soyuz TMA-3 successfully docked to the Pirs module of the ISS on October
20 at 11:15:58 Moscow Time (0715 GMT). (Scheduled time: 0716 GMT). After
a week-long hand-over activities, Expedition 7 and Duque returned to Earth
onboard Soyuz TMA-2 on Oct. 27, 2003.
The
Soyuz TMA-3 (No. 213, Mission 7S) was the seventh Russian manned spacecraft
to fly to the ISS, the third to deliver a long-term crew and the second
carrying people to the station, since the loss of the Shuttle Columbia
and the resulting grounding of the US manned space fleet. Russian transport
ships are expected remain the only link to the ISS for the most of 2004.
Due to limited capabilities of the Russian supply system, the standard
long-duration crews were reduced from three to two people.
Crunch
time for the International Space Station
Posted: 2003
October 23
While the
eight crew was settling onboard the ISS, doubts about the future of the
station continued lingering below.
As the Shuttle
fleet remained grounded, Russians essentially held the keys from the station.
They launched fresh crews and cargo ships with the precision of a Swiss
clock and
promised
to get
the
International Space Station
through
the Space Shuttle hiatus; however, behind the scene, Russian space officials
voiced concerns for
years
about dangers
to the orbiting outpost.
The lack
of funds
they
said
had left the
Russian side
of the
International Space Station running on a shoestring budget for practically
a
decade
, since the nation joined the partnership
in 1993. Yet, all appeals to the Russian government and to the international
partners have been left unheard, as country's space officials scrapped
for cash to complete virtually
every Russian
mission
to the ISS. In some respect, Russians fell victims of their
own success. Despite all the financial pressure, their
Soyuz
lifeboats and
Progress
cargo ship were taking
off with remarkable regularity and always reached the outpost without
a hitch. Not surprisingly, repeating Russian pleas over the years for
more cash started sounding like ... well ... an extortion ploy.
In the meantime,
Russian planners kept extending time between resupply missions to the
ISS, slowly degrading the cache of spare parts and water onboard the station.
On February 1, 2003, the Columbia tragedy and resulting grounding of the
Shuttle fleet placed an entire burden of maintaining the station on Russia.
At the time, officials from RKK Energia, (the country's leading station
contractor) urged their foreign partners to come up with extra funds to
finance emergency supply missions to the ISS.
In May 2003,
NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe visited Moscow and promised his Russian
counterparts to consider the issue, however no real steps had followed.
The US Congress prohibited NASA to transfer money to Russia as a punishment
for the Russian assistance to Iran to build its nuclear capacity. Although
during recent summit, Presidents Bush and Putin reported some progress
on the issue, the congressional restrictions on NASA's dealings with the
Russians had never been lifted.
Although
NASA officially maintained that Russian funding problems did not endanger
the ISS, unofficially many NASA representatives admitted that financial
problems were slowly degrading the station's capacity to support the crew,
first of all its crucially important water supplies and availability of
spare parts. Days after the launch of the Soyuz TMA-3, Washington Post
run
an article
, which quoted unidentified NASA officials, voicing serious
concerns about the safety of the ISS crew. However several times before,
RKK Energia officials did go on record, saying that recently they raised
the possibility of withdrawing the permanent crew from the station to
save funds. During this year, Yuri Grigoriev, Deputy Designer General
at RKK Energia, said that unless funds for the extra cargo launches at
the end of 2003 and during 2004 were found, the partners might face the
prospect of flying the station unmanned.
Grigoriev
warned that although the unmanned flight of the outpost is not impossible
and the station's flight control system is in good shape, absence of crew
onboard poses additional risk of irreversible breakdowns and complete
loss of control over the orbital facility. In 1984, the Russian
Salyut-7
space station went out of control, while flying unmanned, which required
an extremely dangerous rescue mission to revive the outpost. When the
rescue crew finally boarded the Salyut-7 in 1985, it found all station's
crucial systems frozen dead and its internal volume virtually uninhabitable.
It took weeks of harsh conditions and dangerous work to bring the facility
back online.
Spacesuit
trouble interrupts station spacewalk
Published:
2004 Feb. 27
Problems
with cooling system in one of the spacesuits forced two astronauts onboard
the
International Space Station
, ISS, to cut short
their venture outside of the outpost.
Commander
Michael Foale and Flight Engineer Alexander Kaleri left
Pirs Docking Compartment
onboard the ISS on February 26, at 2117 GMT.
Their scheduled
tasks included the retrieval of a set of retroreflectors from the aft
end of the Zvezda Service Module. Retrieval of the retroreflectors would
assist the preparation of navigational data for next year's maiden arrival
of a new European supply ship. The spacewalkers were also expected to
deploy an experiment test bed designed to study the radiation environment
and change sample packages in a Japanese materials exposure experiment.
They also will change sample packages in a Russian apparatus that is used
to study the residue created from Station thruster firings and install
a Russian materials exposure experiment.
However after
more than three hours outside of the station, the Orlan spacesuit worn
by Alexander Kaleri got overheated and as a result, the cosmonaut's visor
was covered with fog impairing his vision enough to terminate further
work outside. The crew's work to support the arrival of the European cargo
ship had not been accomplished.
The spacewalk
lasted 3 hours and 55 minutes and concluded on February 27 at 0112 GMT.
According
to Russian space officials, the problem with the cooling system was caused
by natural flattening of the plastic tube in the cooling loop. The troubled
spacesuit had not been used for more than a year, as a result of the long
lull in the station construction in the wake of the Columbia accident.
It was apparently delivered to the station as far back as 2001. Ironically,
a brand new spacesuit was just
recently delivered
to the station onboard the latest
Progress cargo
ship
, however it was not used for the latest spacewalk.
Soyuz
TMA-3 landing
On April
30, 2004, after nine days of handover activities onboard the station,
the Expedition 8 crew along with ESA astronaut André Kuipers, who
arrived with
Soyuz TMA-4
nine days earlier,
boarded Soyuz TMA-3 spacecraft. It undocked from the Pirs
Docking
Compartment
of the
ISS
at 00:52 Moscow Time
on April 30, 2004.
According
to RKK Energia, the spacecraft developer, the Soyuz TMA-3 initiated a
braking maneuver at 03:20 Moscow Time and at 03:45 habitation and instrument
modules separated from the reentry capsule. The craft entered the Earth
atmosphere around 03:48 and successfully landed in Kazakhstan at 04:11:46
Moscow Time (0011 GMT).
The landing
site was located some 60 kilometers northeast of the town of Arkalyk at
the point 50.38 North latitude and 67.20 East longitude.
The Soyuz
TMA-3 mission lasted 195 days, including 193 days docked to the ISS.
Next mission:
Soyuz TMA-4
|
The
Soyuz TMA-3 spacecraft approaches the International Space Station on October
20, 2003. Credit: NASA
The seventh and eight crews plus a European guest astronaut onboard the
International Space Station (ISS) in October 2003. From the left (front
row) are cosmonaut Yuri I. Malenchenko, Expedition 7 mission commander;
European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Pedro Duque of Spain; astronaut
C. Michael Foale, Expedition 8 mission commander and NASA ISS science
officer. From the left (back row) are astronaut Edward T. Lu, Expedition
7 NASA ISS science officer and flight engineer, and cosmonaut Alexander
Y. Kaleri, Expedition 8 flight engineer. Credit: NASA
The
Soyuz TMA-4 departs the International Space Station. Credit: NASA
|